McCaskill: House Climate Bill Won't Pass The Senate

The climate change bill that squeaked through the House just before recess doesn't have a chance in the Senate, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Tuesday.

"If there is going to be enough support for the bill, it will be a very gradual implementation as we move toward changing to wind and solar and other kinds of energy," McCaskill told conservative Missouri talk radio host Mike Ferguson. "I'm going to be one of those trying to craft it in a way that is very gradual, that is not going to hurt a state like Missouri that is so coal dependent."

McCaskill cast herself as an emissary of bipartisan compromise on climate change, but acknowledged that Democratic leadership's urgency on the issue is a function of dire warnings from the scientific community and a desire to set an example for the year-end climate change summit in Denmark.

She said she's in no rush to take the lead on a cap-and-trade approach, given what she sees as less-than-satisfactory action by other global powers. "We need to be a leader in the world but we don't want to be a sucker. And if we go too far with this, all we're going to do is chase more jobs to China and India, where they've been putting up coal-fired plants every 10 minutes," she said.

Her solution for Missouri's coal-driven energy supply, she said, would be a decade-long shift toward sequestered coal or other unnamed sources of energy.

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